Jan walked through the hallways, thinking about the last few hours. He had tried to be discreet about things, not wanting to further upset people further after the unexpected desertion of the base commander, Who had he talked to again? The new commander first and foremost. He reminisced on how that exchange had gone.

[hr]

“Oh, Mr. Gent, do come in. Is something biting at you?”, Matt commented and asked when he noticed Jan entering his ‘new office’ which used to be his predecessors’ quarters. 

“Well sir, sorry to bother you what with all that’s been going on… but I had a little… incident on the return trip from the railgun job.”

“Is that so? Care to elaborate? Was it an error in your NC, or something of the sort?”

“I… don’t really know what happened. I had a spontaneous bout of… what I can only describe as vivid and disturbing hallucinations. I checked the logs afterwards, my neural activity spiked, but I couldn’t really trace back any real cause.” He still thought back to the event. He couldn’t remember having something like that happen to him before.

“Interesting. I’ll let the engineers look into it. Can you tell me anything else, to help with the problem?”. Matt had a look of intrigue in his eyes, obviously interested in this situation, yet perhaps not caring too much on a personal level. Of course, maybe Jan was still just seeing things.

“So what does this mean from an operational level? Am i grounded till we look further into this or?” Jan was asking more as a confirmation than anything else, of course they wouldn’t be sending him into combat if there was something that faulty going on with his NC. Would they?

“Hmm… Well…”, Matt spinned around his chair’s swivel once, apparently just because he could. “You do know how rude it is to answer a question with a question? In any case, I believe it’d be best for you to stay grounded until we figure things out.”

“Ah, yes…  sorry, It’s been on my head all day. What I remember from my perspective was that I inexplicably entered a state of complete sensory hallucination. To the point where if it had happened while in combat, I would have been a sitting duck for the duration of the episode. I don’t know why this happened, It’s really a first in all the time I’ve piloted the Goldenspur.” Jan took a deep breath. “It’s a good call to ground me, I’m telling you that.”

“Mmm, well, I’m not a complete idiot is all. Nor am I utterly bloodthirsty! In any case, yes, I’ll have the engineers and our neural net expert investigate this matter until they find the cause.”. Matt was seemingly pleased with how Jan fed his ego, subconsciously.

[hr]

And that’s how Jan found himself grounded for the flotilla job. To have something to do while the rest of the team was away, he had volunteered to help out at mission control. He wouldn’t be there in person, but at least he could offer his experienced opinion about situations as they developed. He reported to mission control after the briefing, though taking a small detour to fix himself a sandwich. He could hear the tech next to him mutter something about mayonnaise stains, but he was already busying himself with figuring out the console in front of him.